


The Thing About the Thing With Feathers (All of Season Six)

by liz_marcs



Series: Distant Voices [3]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Melancholy, Season/Series 06, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 07:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14890223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liz_marcs/pseuds/liz_marcs
Summary: Sometimes she feels like there’s a part of her trapped in amber. It’s like she’s the perpetual teeny-bopper-with-a-crush, even though her reflection in the glass tells her that she should be beyond that by now. (Annie with a splash of assorted others throughout all of season six)





	1. Past is Prologue (Annie)

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the “Distant Voices” series. This is mostly a series of loosely collected short Jeff/Annie stories. Posted not necessarily in chronological order, hence the month and year in the titles.
> 
> This story is positioned in third place out of the five stories posted so far. 
> 
> Click on the "Distant Voices" series link to access all of the stories.

**Past is Prologue (Annie)**  
(mid-April 2014)

Even though the campus is still lousy with Subway branding, and the Greendale remnants holding it all together is still trashed, the study group holds a little celebratory shindig where Annie puts up the ceremonial “Save Greendale” star under the accomplished portion of their to-do board.

Her friends may think she’s beaming with pride as she turns to face them, but the truth is that she’s smiling with relief. Everything and _everyone_ is in their place, everything and _everyone_ has reset to their natural equilibrium.

Well, almost everyone.

Okay, she’s not there yet. She will be, just not today. But _they_ don’t know that.

The _they_ in this equation refers to a specific subset of _they_ , rather than the general _they_ in the room.

But again, _they_ don’t know there’s anything to know, and that’s okay.

Really, it is.

Because if _they_ knew, there’d be…a reaction.

Maybe condescending pity (Britta), or some vague concern expressed via a string of placating words that would be the verbal equivalent of a head pat (definitely Jeff).

So, yeah. If _they_ (she’s thinking the general _they_ for this part) want to believe she’s beaming with pride, let them. She’ll keep her relief very much to herself.

Almost despite herself, her eyes find Abed.

She’s pretty sure that Abed’s not fooled even in the slightest.

She knows he won’t say anything here and now, but it wouldn’t surprise her if at some point he finds a way to make her confront it. If he does, he’s in for a rude surprise, because Annie’s done.

She’s 100% done.

She knows she’s made that vow in the past, but this time _she means it_.


	2. We're Finally Going to Be Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luckily, she’s able to fill her Greendale days with so much busy that she’s able to short-circuit her normal pattern of thinking, overthinking, and then mentally re-running all the scenarios in hopes that the past somehow comes out different.

**We're Finally Going to Be Fine (Annie)**  
(late April 2014 through mid-June 2014)

To Annie’s surprise, everyone is on-board with pitching in for the clean-up. The volunteer sign-up sheet quickly becomes multiple sign-up sheets as both students and faculty step forward.

She doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Considering the school is closed for _at least_ two months, Annie figured the only volunteers to help the custodians and janitors sort through the mess left behind by Subway would be herself, the Dean, and whomever she could guilt putting in a few hours a week.

It could be the Greendale community is relieved that they can continue on the way they always have. No one thought the Subway takeover would result in anything good, at least not for the people who were already here. Everyone knew they’d be left out in the cold, unless they were willing to dedicate their lives to making sub-standard sandwiches for minimum wage.

Or maybe everyone here really does love Greendale, even if they complain about it and the crazy it contains.

Either way, Annie’s not going to question the outpouring of civic engagement. So, she strikes while the iron is hot and has everyone organized into work teams within a week of Subway’s abdication. She figures if she waits any longer those currently eager volunteers are going to fall back into the usual apathy and renege on their commitments.

The biggest shock in all of this is _Jeff_. He not only insisted that Annie schedule him every day for the cleanup (including weekends!), he also volunteered to lead the teams responsible for cleaning up the most damaged areas.

The word _lead_ , of course, immediately pings a whole host of warning bells in Annie’s head. In Jeff-speak, _lead_ usually translates to: “I sit on the sidelines and ‘supervise’ by providing a running, sarcastic commentary while everyone else does all the work. Then I take all the credit. The end.”

Annie is simply not in the headspace for any back-and-forth that would invariably accompany calling Jeff out on his obvious ploy to lazily burnish the hero cred (rightfully earned!) he got for being the one who ultimately saved Greendale. Instead, Annie gives him a friendly and slightly maniacal chipper, “Thanks!”

Her tone and the smile are completely forced, but Jeff doesn’t seem to notice.

Annie’s not surprised he doesn’t. Disappointed, yes; but not surprised. If there’s anything she’s learned in the past month, it’s that Jeff simply doesn’t care what she thinks. Or feels.

Oh, he cares if it affects him _directly_. When he was a student, her moods certainly had the power to affect him. After all, an angry or upset Annie would be disruptive to the studying process, thus placing his hopes for getting a passing grade for a given class in doubt. It made sense, from an entirely selfish, Jeff-i-sonian standpoint to humor her when she had the upper academic hand.

Now that Jeff’s a teacher he doesn’t need to care beyond some shallow stabs at going with the flow to keep the peace, and he’s only doing that much because they have too many friends in common. She wonders how much more the group will need to shrink before Jeff decides even minimal effort is too much effort.  

This whole train of thought makes her feel stupid for not realizing this truth before now.

No, worse.

It makes her feel naïve.

She is exactly what everyone said she was, and that realization somehow hurts the most in this awkward situation with Jeff.

In an effort to keep from dwelling on it, she throws herself into the clean-up. She makes sure that Jeff is always assigned to tasks that are the furthest away from wherever she’s going to be, which sometimes ironically works out in his favor in the form of easier tasks than he’d get otherwise.

She has Britta and Shirley working together to straighten up the cafetorium, mostly as a favor to Shirley who desperately wants to reclaim her business space.

She keeps Abed busy by assigning him to rescuing A/V department’s space and recovering the equipment.

Hickey she assigns to sleuthing out the forensic department’s missing lab equipment. Hickey grumbles at first, but throws himself completely into it to the point that she caught him _almost_ smiling when he tracked down a trove of microscopes that had mysteriously been pawned. Although the almost smiling part was probably more due to Hickey’s plan to get them back without paying for them by leaning on the pawn shop owner for not filing the proper paperwork when they received the microscopes.

As for her? She works with the Dean or as an army of one, making sure everything remains on track and organized, or pitching in where an extra pair of hands is needed.

And yes, she’s totally avoiding working with her friends.

Jeff is on the avoid list, for obvious reasons.

Britta is on the list because even though Britta seems to be _totally fine_ with the fact that she and Jeff are _not_ getting married, Annie’s afraid Britta might want to actually talk about her reaction to the engagement announcement complete with throwing in “sisterly advice” about how they both dodged a Winger-shaped bullet.

Shirley’s on the avoid list because she’s been rooting for a Jeff-and-Britta romcom happy ending from their first week at Greendale, which means she’s actually upset the wedding was called off.

She’s avoiding Abed because…well, because. She has to deal with those worried-but-knowing looks at home. She shouldn’t have to put up with them at Greendale, too.

She’s also avoiding Hickey because he keeps studying her like she a box of sweating TNT that just might explode at the slightest provocation. It’s exactly like Abed’s looks, only on the opposite side of the coin. She’s 100% sure that Hickey would _hate_ having this pointed out to him.

Yes, it’s petty. No, she doesn’t care.

Okay, she does care. A little.

It’s not because she wants someone to notice that she’s engaging in some creative avoidance (hint: she _doesn’t_ ), but because of how it makes it her feel (hint: _terrible_ ). As it turns out, she is _also_ exactly the other thing everyone said she was.

In this case, childish.

Luckily, she’s able to fill her Greendale days with so much busy that she’s able to short-circuit her normal pattern of thinking, overthinking, and then mentally re-running all the scenarios in hopes that the past somehow comes out different.

Aside from the twinge she feels when she assigns Jeff to some distant corner of the campus _far away from her_ , she selfishly spares no thought of her friends at all and luxuriates in tasks that need to get done, planning the next line of attack in the clean-up, tracking down missing files that got shipped off campus for archiving, and actually having friendly, if work-like, interactions with people who are not part of her constricted social circle.

All the hard work and planning pays off, and much sooner than Annie expected. The Greendale campus is restored to its former glory within six weeks instead of the expected eight or nine. Just in time, too. The eager cadre of volunteers was starting to lose motivation and had begun skipping out on their promised work details.

Still, she can’t complain. Nobody was getting paid to do this, and all the work got done. Best of all she feels like she’s on much firmer footing, mentally and emotionally speaking. The slight bit of distance she put between herself and the others was the best thing she could have done for herself. By the time the final meeting rolls around and school-wide-thank-you-pizza-and-dance party ends, Annie feels like she’s _finally_ back to her old self, minus the childish crush on Jeff.

She’s so at peace with the new geometry of her world that when Jeff comes up to her during the party and congratulates her on her sheepdog-like skills at herding the stubborn goats that make up the Greendale student body in such a way that _no one_ actually thought of rioting, Annie can genuinely smile at him and accept the compliment.


	3. The Memory Hole (Annie)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow. She really is getting lessons in just how selfish the world really is. It’s getting to the point where she feels like the universe is repeatedly punching her in the face and stealing her lunch money while screaming, “You get it? You get it? Are you getting it now? How about now?”

**The Memory Hole (Annie)**  
(end of June 2014)

Annie’s still flying high a few days later when she decides that she’s going to take one final, solitary victory lap around campus before the doors open for a truncated late-summer session and the perfectly ordered (and perfectly empty) school becomes significantly less ordered.

She just wants to drink in the ideal before reality intrudes.

Okay, that kind of attitude has gotten her in trouble in the past, but this time it’s different. This time she’s just enjoying the moment for what it is, complete with the understanding that it can’t last. Besides, Greendale’s rescue and rehabilitation from the clutches of Subway is actually real and tangible, unlike her past stumbles into crashing disappointment that involved believing she as on the same page as another person, only to have reality slap her down. Hard. In public. In front of multiple witnesses. In the most humiliating way possible.

She’s drifting down the hallway, past the trophy case in a self-satisfied, happy haze when the corner of her eye catches something and brings her to a sudden halt. Her head whips round so fast that it takes a moment for her to register what she’s seeing.

Or rather, what she’s _not_ seeing.

“What…the… _it’s gone_?” she says out loud to herself as she crowds up against the glass.

The framed front page of the _Gazette Journal Mirror_ declaring her and Jeff “Debate Team Champs!” is distinctly missing. The ridiculously tiny trophy with “Debate Championship — 2009” carved in the base is still there, but the actual explanation for it — the framed newspaper complete with picture of her and Jeff captured moments after her desperate gambit to prove _man is evil!_ — is most definitely _not_.

Now when students look at the trophy case — assuming anyone but her actually does that — they’ll see the trophy, but they won’t have the context. They won’t know who won it, or how it was won. She and Jeff have been effectively air-brushed out of the picture.

She can’t breathe.

“Annie!” declares an overly cheerful voice. “What are you doing here?”

Annie nearly jumps out of her skin at the greeting and lets out a screamlette of surprise as she spins around to face the source.

“Dean! Sorry! You startled me!” she gasps as she clutches at her heart.

“Well, _obviously_.” Dean Pelton cheerfully waves off her dramatic display. “I’m guessing you’re here to take a last look around before daily life returns to these hallowed halls? Well, I can _hardly_ blame you. You should be proud of yourself!”

Annie can feel the rictus grin spread across her face. “Yes, yes, that’s it exactly. You know. I just…well, it’s like you said.” She lets out a high-pitched half-laugh that sounds like she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Just wanted to make sure everything was ready to go and in tip-top shape. Even though it can’t last. I mean, it definitely won’t. But that’s no reason to at least start off on the right foot, right?”

Dear God, if she babbles any harder, the Dean’s going to _notice_. If the Dean notices, he’s going to wonder what she’s _really_ up to, and he’s going to ask _questions_ , and that would be _bad_ because she _doesn’t want to talk about it, okay!_

“In-dean-a-deed! From now on it’s going to be all right feet! No more left feet!” the Dean cheers.

Annie can feel her strained smile. “Right! All right feet! From now on!”

“Well, until the next school dance, anyway,” Dean Pelton says with a chuckle. “Or the next school-wide game. Or riot. Or riot caused by a change in the school menu. Or—”

“I get the point,” Annie quickly interrupts. God, the smile is fixed on her face like she’s some kind of clown. No, the Joker. A Joker-clown. Oh, God! She’s turning into the Joker. And the Joker was played by Heath Ledger. And Heath Ledger died of an overdose. And when she was in high school she overdosed on Adderall, which means she’s half-way to Heath Ledger and—

Fingers snapping in front of her face knock her out of her panicked spiral. “Annie, are you okay?”

“What? No! I’m fine,” Annie desperately says as she waves her hands in front of her face as if to shoo the Dean away and backs up a step. Her mind quickly settles on a lie. “I guess I’m nervous about relaunching the new, improved, cleaned-up Greendale.”

Dean Pelton leans forward and blesses her with a kind smile as he drops his voice, “So am I, if you want to know the truth. But I’m pretty sure everything is fixed. Thanks to the Subway clean-up, we went above and beyond your original to-do list.” He straightens up and adds with a bright smile. “Jeffrey and his team of brave little toasters even found the source of the black mold and killed it.”

“Yeaaaahhhh,” Annie slowly agrees. “Although the hallucinations and the way the mold team’s skin turned purple was more than a little terrifying.”

“Well, can’t remove the mold without an emergency room visit or ten,” Dean Pelton cheerfully says as he turns away.

Annie can feel every muscle in her body relax. The Dean bought it. Now she can just float along with the fiction that everything is fine and—

“Hey, Dean?” the words are out of her mouth before she can stop herself. “I, unh, have a question about something. Something that’s still missing.”

She’s possessed. That’s the only rational explanation. Some evil little demon has taken over her body and is doing this _specifically to humiliate her_.

The Dean waves over his shoulder as he keeps walking, “Stop worrying! Everything is fine!”

“Something’s missing from the trophy case.” _Oh god oh god oh god oh god whatamidoing!_

The Dean actually turns around, “Oh! That.” He walks back to her and adds, “Yeah, I’m not happy about it either.”

The Dean’s response makes her feel better. _Clearly_ the culprit is Subway. One of Subway’s evil minions obviously tossed the framed newspaper and then set fire to all of the back copies of the _Gazette Journal Mirror_ in an orgy of destruction. It wasn’t done on _purpose._ No one was deliberately trying to shove that memory down into a deep dark hole so it would be forgotten. Nope. It was just a casualty of Subway’s war on Greendale’s existence.

Still, best to ask about it. Perhaps in questioning the Dean, she could figure out a way to replace it. Maybe she could get a lead on where some spare copies of the old school newspaper might be lying around. She’s pretty sure she could ask Hickey perform the actual search, find, and destroy mission (with her observing, naturally). If there was one thing Annie learned during the reconstruction of Greendale, it was that Hickey had a knack for finding things and then getting them back.

“What happened?” Annie asks.

Dean Pelton stands next to her as he studies the trophy case, hands raised as if he were framing the case to take a picture. “It really does look empty, doesn’t it? I wish I could just replace it. Grab one of the spare copies in the newspaper office, frame it up, and place right there.”

“Wait.” Annie’s eyes snap to the Dean. “We still have copies of that issue?”

“Oh, yes. Of course!” Dean Pelton responds. “They were shipped off campus and stored with all the other records.”

“When why—” Annie begins.

“Jeffrey,” he interrupts before she can finish the question.

Annie can feel her stomach drop. “Jeff? What does he have to do with this?”

Dean Pelton can barely keep the disappointment out of his voice. “He said he didn’t want it in the trophy case.” He makes a tsking sound with his teeth. “It’s a shame because it was such a good picture of him. His bone structure really is just to die for.”

Annie shakes her head as she tries to wrap her mind around this new piece of information. “Did he actually say that?”

“Well, you know Jeffrey. He does go on and on about his ‘moneymaker.’”

“No, no, no.” Annie interrupts. “I’m talking about the _newspaper_.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yes,” Annie nods. “That.”

Dean Pelton shrugs. “I caught him stealing it.”

“Stealing it? What do you mean _stealing_ it?”

Dean Pelton holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “Well, now, Annie. I can understand why this is upsetting. You must feel like the debate team’s big win for ol’ Greendale has been erased. But it hasn’t! City College will live with that humiliation forever.”

Annie’s head drops as she huffs a frustrated breath.

Dean Pelton awkwardly pats her shoulder, causing Annie to look up.

“Unfortunately, though, we have to erase it from _here_ ,” he adds.

“But you haven’t said _why_ ,” Annie presses.

“Jeffrey said that since he’s a teacher, it’s probably not a good idea to have proof that he was a student not that long ago out in the open.”

“ _That_ was his reasoning,” Annie deadpans as a lead weight settles in the pit of her stomach.

“Weeellll, you know Jeffrey. There were a lot more words involved, but that was the gist. Yes.” Dean Pelton adds in a conspiratorial tone, “Apparently, some of the newer students found out that Jeffrey is a prestigious alum of Greendale, a truth they apparently discovered when they saw our little homage to the Greendale Debate Team victory in the trophy case. He said he had to deal some student _issues_ that arose in class because of it.”

Crap. Much as she hates to admit it, she can’t find fault with Jeff’s stated reasons. He’s an actual _teacher_. Okay, an unmotivated Greendale teacher where _at least_ half the student body already knows that he was once an unmotivated student, but if he’s ever going to gain any credibility as a teacher, then he really shouldn’t leave a big honking reminder of his less-than-stellar undergrad career laying around.

“That’s fair,” Annie grudgingly agrees.

Dean Pelton _actually_ wilts. If Annie didn’t know any better, she’d think he was actually disappointed in _her_ , the one who _didn’t_ steal a piece of Greendale history from the trophy case.

She honestly doesn’t know what the Dean expected of her, and she’s not about to ask. If she asks, it might lead to (ugh!) a _conversation_. She just spent weeks doing everything in her power to _avoid_ having any kind of conversation that might conceivably lead her back that moment when Jeff announced he and Britta were getting married.

Instead, she focuses on the future. Jeff may be right to want to hide the framed newspaper from the student body, but he had _no_ right taking it away from _her_.

“Do you know what he did with it?” Annie asks.

The question seems to perk the Dean right up. “He just carried it away.”

It takes everything Annie has not to grind her teeth with frustration. “Yes. You said. But did he tell you what he was going to do with it?”

“Well, _no_.” Dean Pelton is bafflingly giddy as he delivers this news. “He didn’t _specifically_ say.”

“What did he say? Specifically.”

Dean Pelton gets in close and lowers his voice, almost as if he is afraid that an army of hidden Jeffs are lurking in the shadows and eavesdropping on their conversation. “The only thing he said is ‘out of sight, out of mind.’”

Annie feels the shot to her solar plexus. “He said that?”

“Word for word!” _God_ , why is the Dean so _chipper_?

Annie closes her eyes tightly to prevent the threatened tears from spilling. If the Dean thinks it’s because she’s thinking through the options, so much the better.

“Well, since he doesn’t want students to see it, we know it isn’t anywhere on campus,” Annie begins.

“Naturally.”

“And since he wants the newspaper out of sight and out of mind,” just saying the words hurt, “we know he didn’t bring it home.”

“Are we sure about that?”

Annie opens her eyes and looks at the Dean with what she’s 100% sure is a what-the-hell look.

God knows what the Dean is reading off her expression, because he fidgets. “Actually, you’re probably right about that, too. I mean, _obviously_ you don’t have it.” He pauses before plaintively asking, “You don’t, do you?”

“Definitely not. Besides, _I_ asked _you_ about the missing newspaper, remember?”

“Well, it was worth checking,” Dean Pelton grumbles.

That leaves only one option. It’s going to kill her to say it, but she really does have to soldier through this. The sooner she rips off the Band-Aid, the sooner she can get beyond it.

“Dumpster,” Annie says. The fact she’s not choking it out counts as a massive, massive victory in her mind.

“Dumpster?” The Dean’s wilting again.

“Out of sight, out of mind, remember?” Annie reminds him. “He’s not going to display it anywhere where he can see it, so his office and his apartment are out. He’s not going to leave it where a real Greendale student can see it, so anywhere on school grounds is out.”

“Maybe he gave it to someone in the group?” Dean Pelton hopefully asks.

“Who besides me would want it?” Annie asks. “Hickey barely knew we existed at the time and something like that just isn’t his thing, so he’s out. Shirley never liked the fact that I kissed Jeff at any point, at any time, for any reason, even if it was just to win a debate. Besides, if Jeff offered it to her, she’d just tell him to give it to me. So that’s Shirley out. Britta’s making noises about moving — _again_ — this time because of landlord problems, so even if she wanted it, which I _guarantee_ you she doesn’t, she’s not going to take it just to throw it in moving box she’ll probably never unpack. And even if he did offer it to her, she might take it, but only so she could pass it on to me. Since Britta hasn’t offered me a framed newspaper about Greendale’s debate win, we can safely assume he didn’t offer it to her. So that’s Britta out. He _might_ offer it to Abed as memento, and Abed would definitely take it if offered. However, he _didn’t_ do that, which I know because I live with Abed and would notice if he hung it somewhere in the apartment.”

“And he didn’t offer it to you,” Dean Pelton finishes for her.

Annie feels her shoulders droop as she fights to keep the tone of her voice level. “No. Giving it to me directly means he’d have to deal with my reaction. He just probably figured he didn’t want the headache. Easier to apologize after the fact than ask permission before act, especially if he thought I’d do something to stop him. I bet he figured we didn’t have any additional copies laying around, which means if it disappeared we wouldn’t be able to replace it. Getting rid of it on the sly probably seemed like the easiest path to take. So, no. He didn’t offer it to me,” she shrugs helplessly, “and he’s not going to. That leaves only one option.”

“Dumpster.”

Annie nods as she turns back to the heartbreakingly bare trophy case. “Dumpster,” she agrees. “How long ago did he take it?”

“Last week.”

Well, there goes her plan for digging it out of the trash and bringing it home. “Small correction, then. It was in the dumpster. Now it’s in the dump.”

“You know what? The _hell_ with what Jeffrey wants,” Dean Pelton declares. “I say we get one of the copies from the archives, frame it, and put it right back where it belongs. In the trophy case for everyone to see. _You_ deserve that much, don’t you think?”

Oh, she’s tempted. So very, very tempted.

She wants to wave that framed newspaper like a bloody shirt right under Jeff’s nose to remind him that no matter how much he wishes to airbrush the past, _she_ is not so easily and neatly removed from the picture. This is _real life_ , not some romcom where the losing woman is summarily dismissed at the end of the third act and conveniently gone by the start of the fourth, forgotten by everyone, _including_ her supposed friends. She’s still _here_ and she still _matters_.

That debate win is the _one_ unambiguous win she can point to without feeling like she needs to apologize for or excuse her actions. She kissed Jeff not because of some childish crush, or out of some naïve belief that he gave a damn about her. She kissed Jeff because she wanted to _win_. And since it was before JeffandBritta — hell it was even before JeffandProfessorSlater — she wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes to do it.

Her reasons for that debate kiss were downright _wholesome_ , even if the kiss itself was about as far from wholesome as she was capable of going at the time.

_So you replace it. Then what? What do you hope to accomplish, exactly? Because I guarantee you’re not going to get what you want._

The intruding thought takes the righteous indignation right out of her sails. _At best_ , the replacement will also disappear, except this time Jeff would be more careful about getting rid of it so he could plead ignorance. _At worst,_ Jeff storms into a Save Greendale Committee meeting and demands its removal, which would no doubt spark a fight that would spiral out of control _very_ quickly.

However the scenario plays out, she’s the only guaranteed loser, especially if the scenario veers towards the public confrontation end of the spectrum.

“Don’t bother.” Annie hates how defeated she sounds.

“What?” The Dean appears startled.

“C’mon, you know Jeff. You know what he’s like when he is hell-bent on winning.” Annie manages a half-hearted, half-smile. “We could wallpaper this whole hallway with that issue of the _Gazette Journal Mirror_ and it won’t matter. He’ll just keep pushing and pushing until every single copy of the newspaper disappears in a puff of smoke. The only thing we’ll get is the obligation to apologize after he Wingers us with a Winger speech about how real friends help their other real friends to grow beyond their established patterns and that we were being selfish by trying to hold him to his past as a student, rather than helping him grow into being a teacher.”

“That does sound like something he’d say,” the Dean agrees.

“Since we know how this ends, I say we let it go,” Annie says.

“Well, if you think so.” The Dean sounds crashingly disappointed.

Annie can’t help buy slit a suspicious look his way. “I know why _I’m_ upset about this, but why are you?”

“It just brightened my day whenever I saw it.”

 _I just bet_ , Annie thinks. Really, she shouldn’t be surprised that the Dean wasn’t really in it for her. It was all about having a picture of Jeff within easy reach that he could publicly look at without coming off like a creepy stalker. He was just hoping to get her on his side by playing to her justified indignation over getting erased from history.

Wow. She really is getting lessons in just how selfish the world really is. It’s getting to the point where she feels like the universe is repeatedly punching her in the face and stealing her lunch money while screaming, “You get it? You get it? Are you getting it now? How about now?”

Well, she’s tapping out of this game. If the Dean wants to replace it, let him replace it. She’s not going to get involved. If she fights this battle she'll have to admit, in public, that Jeff managed to hurt her _yet again_.

Nope. Not going to happen.

And if that means swallowing down this injustice with a smile, then that’s what she’s going to do.

“Well, if you want to replace it, go ahead. You’re the Dean,” Annie hopes her shrug comes across as uncaring, “but _you_ get to deal with him _by yourself_ when he blows his top over it.”

Dean Pelton frowns at her.

“I’m serious,” Annie says.

The Dean huffs a breath as he turns to face the trophy case. “Well…I _suppose_ we can leave it as is,” he spins around to waggle a finger in Annie’s face, “but I reserve the right to change my mind!”

Annie holds her hands up as a sign of surrender. “Agreed.”

Dean Pelton is pouty as he shakes his shoulders in the same way birds ruffle their feathers. “Well, I’m heading out. You coming?”

“Soon,” Annie says. “I just want to look around a little more.”

“Alright, then,” the Dean tosses her a wave as he turns to walk away. “See you for the fall semester in a few weeks. Good night!”

“Good night,” Annie calls after him.

She watches until the Dean turns the corner before she refocuses on the trophy case.

Her entire body feels heavy as she shuffles up to the glass, close enough that she can see her reflection.

She needs to be honest, at least with herself.

Jeff’s theft and subsequent destruction of the framed _Gazette Journal Mirror_ about their debate feels an awful lot like a subtle message is being directed at her. It isn’t just that he wants to erase the fact that he was once a student from memory, he wants to drive the point home to her that she was wrong about their relationship, regardless of whether she thought it was romantic or just some pathetically sad UST-riven friendship.

It’s ridiculous, of course. A case of feels over reals. Jeff wasn’t sending her a message, subtle or otherwise. He just wanted the evidence of his student days gone and when the opportunity arose he took it. It’s highly doubtful he even spared her a thought, beyond the fact that he wanted to avoid drama if she had the temerity to argue with him about it.

Annie leans her forehead against the glass in defeat while she fights back tears. The message may not be there, but the heartbreak is _real_.

For the first time in her life, Annie finds herself wishing that September and the start of a new school year will never come.


End file.
